Do the Academy Awards Bore You?

How can the Motion Picture Academy be responsible for anything so tedious, trite, and tiresome? Wouldn't you expect them to put together something interesting?

But it's a trade show, after all. Just a trade show by an industry that considers itself the most important, most relevant industry on earth. That's what happens when you read too much of your own press. The whole thing is reflexive: Celebrities become famous: a billion-dollar celebrity-obsessed media writes about them and fawns over them and flatters them, paying attention to every haircut and mole removal. Is she too heavy, too thin? Anorexic? Ohmygawd... Whether they love you or hate you, the thing is to keep them talking about you and your latest love interest. Bennifer. Braniston. Branjolie. (If you don't think some of these affairs are only for the press, think again. Or read Simon Cowell's book on how to make it to the top as a celebrity.) Soon the celebrities think only of their fawning press and the next publicity stunt. And the magazines keep telling them they are American Royalty. And the press thinks it matters too. People, Us, and a thousand gossip rags think they are relevant because they believe in this stuff too.

So I find every awards show to be horribly boring. Maybe without a fictional plot, the emptiness of these people is more obvious. Sort of the emporer's new clothes. But whatever it is, I just cannot listen to those speeches. . . . speeches given by people who live cloistered lives in a place where reality no longer matters.

But maybe a speech like this would liven things up a bit. (Yeah, Dennis Prager's cool.)